Message from the Academic Director

Welcome to the UCI Labor Center! Workers are at the center of our outward-facing programs, research, and labor education. Through our work, we tackle the economic and social challenges facing working people and their families, raise up their accomplishments, and connect to their struggles for dignity and respect on the job. In our first year, we will launch UCI’s first-ever Labor Summer, a full-time paid internship program for UCI students that pairs them with a labor union or worker organization. Stay tuned as we develop more programming, research, and engagement opportunities that forward our mission of advancing workers’ rights and a worker-centered economy. As the inaugural faculty director, I am incredibly excited by the center’s potential to foster new ideas, new leaders, and new partnerships to improve the lives of working families in Orange County and beyond. Onward!

Virginia Parks

UCI Labor Center Mission

The UCI Labor Center builds the power of working people in Orange County and beyond by promoting, defending, and expanding workers’ rights. Through research, advocacy, policy innovation, education, and outreach, the center supports unions and worker organizations in their efforts to build a fair and racially just worker-centered economy.